This invention relates to digital sinusoidal generators capable of producing an output of fine resolution digital signals, in particular 16-bit signals. The invention more particularly relates to a generator comprising a first computer for the selection of argument values and a second computer serving for function value formation.
In master control desks for sound studio installations, the required signal processing of signals in analog signal representation has conventionally been performed by means of analog circuit elements. With recent developments toward digital signal processing techniques, it has now become necessary to generate sinusoidal (sine) signals on a digital basis.
In a typical conventional digital tone generator, there are stored in addition to the elements of the definition range of the argument values (x) an address of the sine function values (y=sin x) as data. Therewith a sine sequence is formed by periodical read-out. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that any desired tone frequencies cannot be formed with it, but only those which are in a suitable ratio to the scanning frequency can be produced with this apparatus in a simple manner. Otherwise, time-consuming interpolation processes become necessary, which in turn entail problems of accuracy or precision.
Other solutions do not achieve the 16-bit accuracy required for representation of digital signals for sound studio technology or they require generation times of the individual members of the digital signal sequence too long for practical application.